


The One Where There's a Lion in Louis' Flat

by seven (sevenpoints)



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Crack, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-04
Updated: 2012-10-04
Packaged: 2017-11-15 14:26:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,216
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/528272
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sevenpoints/pseuds/seven
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I don't even have an explanation for this. Written for <a href="http://colazitron.livejournal.com/">colazitron</a> because she likes lions and has a headcanon where Niall is a leprechaun. Also inspired by <a href="http://sevenpoints.tumblr.com/post/17334912596">this</a>. That's it that's the whole summary.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The One Where There's a Lion in Louis' Flat

Zayn’s eyes flew open at the sound of screams.  
  
He’d leaped out of bed before his brain caught up and stood frozen in his pants, processing. Screams. Not in his room. Screams outside, down the hall.  
  
 _Louis_ ’ screams.  
  
With every nerve sharply awake, he scrambled for his keys and ran like hell to the flat Louis and Harry shared. It took him three tries to unlock the door—adrenaline, his fucking useless brain supplied—and then the door was open and he was crashing back onto the hallway floor as Louis threw himself into his arms.  
  
“ _Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck Zayn fuck—!_ ”  
  
“Lou?” The other boy was hysterical, cursing and clinging to him as he tried to stand, but his limbs were completely uncoordinated. “Lou, Louis! What is it, man?”  
  
“It’s a _fucking_ lion—”  
  
“ _What?_ ”  
  
Louis smacked his shoulder, stinging against his bare skin. “A lion. There’s a fucking lion in my fucking flat and _it fucking ate Harry_.”  
  
“A lion.” Zayn repeated. He was officially pissed at Louis for waking him up. “Lou, it was a nightmare.”  
  
“No, it wasn’t, it’s fucking real and it’s in our room.”  
  
Zayn rubbed a hand over his face, not wanting to believe what he was about to do. “Okay, Louis, we’re going to go back into your flat, I’m going to check your room for lions, and then I’m going to beat the shit out of you for waking me up on our day off.”  
  
Louis glowered and got shakily to his feet. “Fine. Lead the way. I hope the lion eats your legs first so you’ll be able to hear me say ‘I told you so.’”  
  
The Bradford boy didn’t bother to answer and just walked into the flat. There was a floor lamp knocked over in the living room, but somehow the bulb hadn’t broken so he just set it upright again on his way back to the bedroom, which was shut. The pale gray not-even-fucking-morning-yet-Louis-was-so-dead light underneath showed a shadow pacing back and forth—probably Harry stumbling around getting dressed after Louis gave him a heart attack.  
  
He glanced over his shoulder for Louis, only to find him standing well back and armed with the floor lamp Zayn had so thoughtfully picked up. His mouth was set in a grim line and Zayn had a sinking feeling when he realized the image should have been weird, but instead seemed perfectly normal.  
  
What the fuck was his life.  
  
“Harry?” he called. The shadow stopped, centered on the door, but there was no response. “Put some clothes on, mate, we’re coming in.”  
  
He opened the door, and the lion blinked at him.  
  
The next thing he knew he was sprawled in the hallway again, only this time he was on top of Louis, and Louis was still holding the lamp.  
  
“ _There’s a fucking lion in your flat, man!_ ”  
  
“ _I fucking told you so!_ ”  
  
“ _Okay_ , okay.” Zayn gasped, struggling for breath. He really needed to quit smoking. “Okay, lion in your room, got it. And no Harry?”  
  
Louis’ face crumpled. He shook his head.  
  
“Okay, we’re not panicking, we’re not jumping to conclusions. Okay. It’s stuck in there, right?”  
  
“Uh. Right. So long as you remembered to shut the door.”  
  
He blanked. Louis’ eyes widened. “You remembered to shut the door, right?”  
  
“Um.” He literally didn’t remember anything between seeing the lion and tackling Louis on their way out of the flat.  
  
There were a series of soft, heavy foot steps behind him and slowly, slowly, he turned his head to look.  
  
The lion stood just inside the flat, its panting jaw revealing a large number of very sharp teeth.  
  
Zayn felt his balls shrink up inside his body.  
  
“Don’t—don’t move,” Louis whispered. “Maybe it’ll lose interest.”  
  
“It’s not a fucking T-Rex,” he hissed back. Regardless, he kept as still as possible, barely daring to breathe.  
  
The lion tilted its head at them then stepped gingerly forward (Zayn began to pray) and looked up and down the hall. The boys unconsciously mimicked its motions. No one there.  
  
It sank a little on its forelegs, like it was trying to sneak up on them or look smaller or something, and crept a few steps closer, just enough that it could lean down and lick Louis’ bare ankle.  
  
“Oh god,” Louis whimpered. “N-nice lion. Nice, tame circus lion that’s been fed steak its whole life and never, ever eaten people.”  
  
The lion bared its fangs but didn’t snarl. It almost smiled. Then it backed up, retreating into the flat, and jerked its head at them.  
  
“Did it just…” Zayn whipped his head around to stare at Louis, who didn’t take his eyes off the lion for a second. “Did it just tell us to go inside?”  
  
“I think,” Louis replied, “we need to call Niall.”  
  
—-  
  
“I’d try to deny this,” Niall said, “but who am I kidding.”  
  
Louis rolled his eyes. Beside him on the sofa, the lion—Harry—did as well. “The question is, how long will it last this time?”  
  
Zayn snorted. “No, the question is, why’d you turn Harry into a lion, Niall?”  
  
The blond flushed guiltily. Surprisingly, Liam did too. It was him who answered. “We were watching Lion King last night and, um.” The two of them shared a glance. “There might have been drinking…and we might have started casting people as characters.”  
  
“I’m Pumbaa.” Niall seemed strangely pleased with that announcement and, peering closer, Zayn realized that his friend was probably still drunk after his night of being a _complete idiot_.  
  
“I’m happy for you,” he deadpanned. “I take it Harry was Simba?”  
  
“Yeah,” Liam confessed. “And then we just sort of kept talking about how Harry is like a lion. The hair—”  
  
“—and the way he always stretches out and hogs the couch,” Niall supplied.  
  
That made them all turn to look at Harry, who guiltily tried to gather his long, heavy body into a tighter curl so Louis didn’t have to perch on the edge of a cushion. Zayn could practically hear his sanity saying _fuck this, I’m off_ as he watched.  
  
“Right,” he said, standing up. “Harry is a lion, Niall is a leprechaun, Louis is a screaming pussy—” “ _Hey!_ ” “—and I’m going back to bed.”  
  
“But, what are we gonna do about this?” Louis gestured at Harry, who seemed to be distracted by a dust mote hovering over his nose. He tried to focus on it, cross-eyed, then snapped, chasing it through the air until he was doubled up on himself with his head in Louis’ lap and his paws in the air. For a moment the two stared at each other, visibly letting the weirdness sink in, then Harry flashed his fangs in a grin and treated Louis’ face to a long, rasping lick.  
  
“ _Yeecchh!_ ”  
  
Within seconds Niall was on the floor, hugging himself and cackling as Louis yelped and cursed and tried to break free of the giant paws gripping him so Harry could bathe every inch of him with his giant, smelly tongue. Liam was frozen halfway out of his seat, torn between rescuing Louis and joining Niall in his fits of laughter.  
  
Zayn spun on his heel, threw up a two-fingered salute for anyone looking, and slammed the door on his way out.


End file.
